Web pages on today's world wide web often include very complex structures which have text, forms, lists, javascripts, displayed links to other pages, displayed command buttons, graphic images such as photographs, animated flash presentations, links to video, etc. Often, a user will request a web page in order to obtain some information and try to accomplish something such as book a flight. This often involves having to sequence through multiple pages and having to wait for each page to render before whatever the user set out to do is actually accomplished. This can be a slow and annoying process even on a desktop computer with a fast internet connection. It can be extremely slow and impossible or next to impossible on a phone with web browsing capability because of the limitations of such phones and the fact that most web sites are not optimized for mobile devices.
For example, to book a flight on American Airlines, a user will direct his or her browser to the airline's home page www.americanairlines.com, and then wait for the entire home page to render. All the user really wants to do on the first page received is enter her departure airport, destination airport, departure data, return data, indicate desired time frames to depart and return and enter how many passengers are travelling. But in order to do that, the user has to wait for her phone or computer's browser to render the American Airlines graphic, a flash presentation at the top center of the page, text and links regarding fare sale alerts, text and links regarding news about American Airlines and offers they are making, a frequently asked questions link for password help, an input form to check gates and times, schedules and flight status notification for flights that may be carrying a passenger to be picked up, a link to a page to search by price and schedule, graphics and links for hotel specials, a fly-now, pay-later program, a 30% bonus to buy frequent flyer miles and a link to a DealFinder page offering exclusive offers and discounts, and many other links.
When the first page finally completes rendering, the user enters her departure and destination airports and dates and desired times in and gives a search command. That results in another page being requested which the user must wait for her browser to completely render. The page that comes back includes many of the same links and images that were on the first page, a text box which indicates what the search parameters were, a graphic that shows what stage she is in the six page process to book the flight (actually a seven page process because they do not count the home page as one of the pages), a modify search form, and list boxes indicating multiple flights to choose from for departure and return, each of which includes carrier, flight number, departure city, connections, destination city, data and time of each connection, aircraft type, cabin class, flight award miles, whether meals are served and travel time total for all connections and command boxes to continue the process or start over.
If the user chooses to continue, she may have to wait for the entire next page to render only to find out that there has been some error and she has to back up and make a new selection which involves rendering another page and giving the flight selection commands again.
Once all errors are cleared, the user will have to wait for a page to render that has an input form (in addition to many other things) upon which the user can enter her AAdvantage number and her password to log in or to enter a command to continue without logging in. After logging in or giving the continue without logging in command, another page will be loaded and rendered which includes a form which the user can enter her name, AAdvantage number or other frequent flyer number, the frequent flyer program she is in, if any, and her passenger type (adult, senior, child, infant in a seat) and her contact information including her cell number, home number, business number and email address and any promotion code she may be using. She has to enter all the information in required fields, or an error will be generated and a whole new page indicating the error will have to be loaded and rendered. This same passenger information page includes a table of her itinerary, a table which gives the fare summary and a modify search table along with a graphic indicating where she is in the reservation process. She still has four more pages to go if everything goes well.
After entering all the requested data, another page loads which includes a table having her selected itinerary, a fare summary, a summary of her passenger information, a graphic showing her where she is in the process and a hold and start over command button along with numerous other graphic images and links.
After giving the hold command, another page loads which includes a hold reservation summary, command buttons to email the itinerary, send to a calendar or print the page, a table including the record locator, status of the reservation and reservation name, another table including her itinerary, a table giving the fare summary, a table giving the summary details, a box containing text, an image and links allowing her to buy trip insurance, a box containing text, images and links allowing her to add reservations for a car, hotel and one day Admiral's Club pass to her itinerary and numerous other links and graphics.
Most of the page structure on each of these pages which the user must wait for her phone's browser (or her computer's browser) to render is of no interest to her and delays the process of getting done what she wants to get done. Because many web sites are not designed well or optimized to be rendered on phones, some or all of the pages may not render at all or may take so long that she loses interest in the process. She may be ready to actually buy a ticket, but the aggravation and delay of waiting for each complete page to render on her phone (or even her desktop computer) may cause her to give up and not buy a ticket. She may even drop her data subscription on her cell phone concluding that it is not worth the $30 per month or thereabouts which she pays for it because internet browsing on a phone is too slow and frustrating. This is bad for American Airlines and bad for the consumer and bad for the cell phone carrier who lost the data plan subscription.
To make websites useful on cell phones, web sites that have already been developed, often at considerable expense have to be re-created for use with cell phones. A re-creation of each web page on a site would be necessary to support use of the site on cell phones, and this imposes additional expense and delays. Any additional or different content for cell phone usage of a page adds further expense. Aggravating these problems is the fact that this re-creation process has to happen separately for each different kind of cell phone operating system thereby multiplying the delay and expense.
A need has arisen for an application program and supporting systems and tools that can speed up the process of browsing the internet, especially on a cell phone, so as to allow users of mobile phones and even desktop computers and laptops to get things done on the internet more expeditiously and without as much frustration.